‘Her Court’ is a mixed-media installation centred on an antique Carver Chair, an object historically associated with authority, ceremony and the performance of social rank. Traditionally occupied by men within domestic and public spheres of power, the chair is reclaimed here as a symbolic seat shaped by women's histories, voices and acts of political courage.

Draped across the chair is a custom digitally printed velvet textile featuring a surreal suffrage-inspired composition. A female figure levitates above a landscape of pansies, her face obscured by clouds, suspended between visibility and erasure. Two Holloway Prison brooches appear within the textile like gates or emblems of confinement, referencing an artefact held in the Museum of Wimbledon’s Women’s Suffrage Collection: the brooch awarded to Rose Lamartine Yates upon her release from Holloway Prison. Against this symbol of imprisonment, political punishment and hard-won recognition, the floating figure suggests release, defiance and freedom.

A ceremonial sash in the suffragette colours of purple, white and green rests across the chair, recalling the visual language of the movement while transforming the seat into a place of honour and remembrance.

Accompanying the installation are two printed lace portraits depicting Rose Lamartine Yates and Princess Sophia Duleep Singh. Yates was a leading suffragette and local Wimbledon activist whose experiences of imprisonment and political activism inform the work. Duleep Singh, the daughter of Maharaja Duleep Singh and Queen Victoria's goddaughter, used her royal status and independent wealth to campaign tirelessly for women's suffrage in Britain. Printed onto translucent lace, the portraits are partially veiled, evoking memory, absence and the fragile visibility of women within historical narratives.

Beneath the chair, a vintage-style radio plays a looped spoken-word sound work. The voice emerges from an apparently unoccupied seat, suggesting that the chair itself remembers. Echoing the historical role of radio as a medium through which ideas, news and political movements travelled, the work allows absent voices to return and speak once more.

Fragments from the sound work include:
The chair remembers.
Please remain seated.
Please remain silent.
Brace for applause.
White was considered suitable.
White permitted appearance.
Visibility requires discipline.
Purple for dignity.
White for purity.
Green for hope.
This seat is reserved.
This seat is unoccupied.
This seat remembers.

The title ‘Her Court’ reclaims a traditionally male seat of authority. Through textile, portraiture and sound, the installation transforms the Carver Chair from an emblem of hierarchy into a site of remembrance, resistance and female presence. The chair stands empty, yet it is inhabited by the voices, struggles and legacies of women who fought to be seen, heard and represented.